The invention disclosed herein relates generally to automated mail sorting and more particularly, a method of removing unwanted mail from the mailstream using a mail sorting apparatus.
The processing and handling of mailpieces consumes an enormous amount of human and financial resources, particularly if the processing of the mailpieces is done manually. The processing and handling of mailpieces not only takes place at the Postal Service, but also occurs at each and every business or other site where communication via the mail delivery system is utilized. That is, various pieces of mail generated by a plurality of departments and individuals within a company need to be addressed, collected, sorted and franked as part of the outgoing mail process. Additionally, incoming mail needs to be collected and sorted efficiently to ensure that it gets to the addressee in a minimal amount of time. Since much of the documentation and information being conveyed through the mail system is critical in nature relative to the success of a business, it is imperative that the processing and handling of both the incoming and outgoing mailpieces be done efficiently and reliably so as not to negatively impact the functioning of the business. Additionally, it would be helpful if the expense of the time consuming task of sorting the mail could be accounted for and charged back to various departments of the company for which the mail is being sorted.
Some of the incoming mail received at a mailroom of the company can be unwanted or unsolicited mail, the quantity of which can be staggering (since each employee of the company can receive multiple mailpieces from bulk mailers, credit card companies, catalog companies etc. each day) and can exceed the quantity of solicited, anticipated, requested or wanted mail and/or mail with a business purpose. Some of the unwanted or unsolicited mail could be, for example, inappropriate mail or personal mail that an employee is receiving at the employee""s company address such as, for example, retail catalogs. The unwanted or unsolicited mail is expensive to process since it drains the resources of the mail room requiring additional time and labor for sorting and delivery.
Mailroom expenses have typically been charged to various departments of the company that a mailroom serves by using allocation accounting methods. The total cost of running the mailroom is calculated and a percentage of that cost is allocated to each department that a mailroom serves. The percentage could be calculated for example, by using a square footage calculation such that a department that occupies 10% of the square footage of a building which the mailroom provides services to is allocated 10% of the mailroom cost. The allocation method however is inexact. Another method of attributing mailroom costs to the departments that the mailroom provides services to, is to charge back metering costs for outgoing mail. This is called post-centric charge back and is used for outgoing mail. Outgoing mail needs to be affixed with proper postage. Postage meters used to frank mailpieces can include accounting functionality that allows postage costs to be attributed to the department from which the mail originated. This method allows for more precise chargeback of the departments. However, this method is only available for outgoing mail. The distribution of mailroom costs for incoming mail still relies on allocation methods. Incoming mail has been franked at its origin and therefore, simply needs to be sorted and distributed upon arriving at the addressee""s mailroom. The incoming mail processing costs can be great and a large quantity of the cost can be attributed to the processing of unwanted mail described above.
Various automated mail handling machines have been developed for processing incoming mail (removing individual pieces of mail from a stack and performing subsequent actions on each individual piece of mail). Generally, the mail handling machines separate individual mailpieces from a stack, read the mailpieces using an optical character recognition system (OCR) and compare the read information to an addressee database in order to determine the appropriate destination points for delivery of the mailpieces. However, these mail handling machines do not include functionality that would track the numbers and types of mailpieces that are sorted for each of the departments of the company for which the mail is being sorted, and calculate a charge back amount for accounting of mailroom expenses, including the expense of processing unwanted or unsolicited mail.
Thus one of the problems of the prior art is that a system is not available for removing unwanted mail from the mail stream. Another problem of the prior art is that a system is not available for calculating charge back costs sorting unwanted incoming mail, Another problem of the prior art is that expense allocation can be imprecise. Yet another problem of the prior art is that incoming mail handling machines do not provide detailed information about unwanted mail. Therefore, a method that removes unwanted mail from the mail stream and provides data about unwanted mail is needed.
This invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a method of removing unwanted mail from the mailstream. The foregoing is accomplished by providing a method that can determine whether mail is wanted or unwanted. Thus, the present invention is directed to, in a general aspect, a method of removing unwanted mail from a mail stream using an incoming mail sorting apparatus comprising the steps of: obtaining information from a mailpiece using the mail sorting apparatus; evaluating the information obtained from the mailpiece to determine whether the mailpiece should be delivered; delivering the mailpiece if it is determined that the mailpiece should be delivered to an intended recipient or out-sorting the mailpiece if it is determined that the mailpiece should not be delivered to the intended recipient. The method may also include the steps of collecting data regarding the mailpiece including data regarding mailpieces that should not be delivered and associating the data with the intended recipient. Additionally, the data collected could be used for calculating a cost of sorting the mailpiece.
In another embodiment, the method of removing unwanted mail from a mail stream using an incoming mail sorting apparatus comprises the steps of obtaining information from a mailpiece, including mailer information, using the mail sorting apparatus; evaluating the information obtained from the mailpiece and information obtained from an intended recipient to determine whether the mailpiece should be delivered; determining whether future mailpieces from the mailer should be delivered; updating the database to include information obtained regarding delivery of the future mailpieces from the mailer; delivering the mailpiece if it is determined that the mailpiece should be delivered to the intended recipient; out-sorting the mailpiece if it is determined that the mailpiece should not be delivered to the intended recipient.
Thus, an advantage of the method of the present invention is that it provides a method of removing unwanted mail from the mail stream. Another advantage is that a profile of mailers can be created for addressees. Another advantage is that mailroom expenses can be decreased by out-sorting unwanted mail. Yet another advantage of the method of the present invention is that costs associated with unwanted mail can be calculated. Other advantages of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent from the specification. The aforementioned advantages are illustrative of the advantages of the various embodiments of the present invention.